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“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory

FTR#1257 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Stages of Mon­key­pox devel­op­ment
Cred­it: Wikipedia

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram con­tin­ues dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of the con­sor­tium of Eco­Health Analy­sis, Metabio­ta, In-Q-Tel and Munich Re–an asso­ci­a­tion inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare and gen­er­a­tion of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

First, we review the fact that Metabiota–which uses AI and social media scrap­ing (among oth­er tools) to gauge the “fear fac­tor” involved with pan­dem­ic readi­ness (and the asso­ci­at­ed pan­dem­ic insur­ance policies)–was gaug­ing the fear fac­tor for mon­key pox, which had man­i­fest­ed some human infec­tions in the Con­go as “low.”

This was in ear­ly 2020. Now, the dis­ease is on the “front burn­er,” so to speak. Peo­ple are afraid of the “new pan­dem­ic.”

Despite only 306 doc­u­ment­ed cas­es in the U.S. (as of 6/28/2022), hun­dreds of thou­sands of vac­cine dos­es are being read­ied for human use.

The dis­ease bears an epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ty to AIDS: an African mon­key virus infect­ing gay males with mul­ti­ple sex part­ners.

In addi­tion, we review an excerpt­ing of an op-ed col­umn by Scott Got­tlieb, the head of the FDA under Trump, a mem­ber of the con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute and a mem­ber of the board of direc­tors of Pfiz­er.

He notes that the new agency cre­at­ed by Biden to deal with mon­key­pox and oth­er emerg­ing infec­tions was for­mer­ly: ” . . . . an office inside ‌the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices that is charged with coor­di­nat­ing the fed­er­al response to bioter­ror­ism . . . .”

Sam­pling some of the media cov­er­age of the mon­key­pox out­break, Mr. Emory reads from Amer­i­ca’s “News­pa­per of Record,” The New York Times:

“Anoth­er Virus Is Catch­ing Amer­i­ca Off Guard” by Jay K. Var­ma; The New York Times; 6/28/2022; p. A23 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

“Health Offi­cials Call Emer­gency for Mon­key­pox” by Apoor­va Man­davil­li; The New York Times; 7/24/2022; pp. A1-A23 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

“Health Sec­re­tary Says States ‘Need to Work with Us’ on Fight­ing Mon­key­pox” by Sheryl Gay Stol­berg and Noah Wei­land; The New York Times; 7/29/2022; p. A‑20 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

“U.S. Calls Rise of Mon­ey­pox an Emer­gency” by Sheryl Gay Stol­berg and Apoor­va Man­davil­li; The New York Times; 8/5/2022; pp. A1-A15 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

“In Mon­key­pox, Gay Men Con­front a Health Cri­sis With Echoes of the Past” by Liam Stack; The New York Times; 7/29/2022; p. A‑20 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

Media cov­er­age of the out­break char­ac­ter­izes mon­key­pox as a dis­ease afflict­ing pri­mar­i­ly gay males with mul­ti­ple sex partners–similar to the epi­demi­ol­o­gy of the ear­ly AIDS out­break.

Much of the broad­cast con­sists of infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of air­borne trans­mis­sion of mon­key­pox. NB: Mr. Emory can­not com­ment def­i­nite­ly on this possibility–he presents this analy­sis to note the pos­si­bil­i­ty.

We con­clude that chil­dren have con­tract­ed the dis­ease, with­out engag­ing in the behav­ior asso­ci­at­ed with the spread of mon­key­pox, although this is appar­ent­ly quite rare.

1. First, we review the fact that Metabiota–which uses AI and social media scrap­ing (among oth­er tools) to gauge the “fear fac­tor” involved with pan­dem­ic readi­ness (and the asso­ci­at­ed pan­dem­ic insur­ance policies)–was gaug­ing the fear fac­tor for mon­key pox, which had man­i­fest­ed some human infec­tions in the Con­go as “low.”

This was in ear­ly 2020. Now, the dis­ease is on the “front burn­er,” so to speak. Peo­ple are afraid of the “new pan­dem­ic.”

Despite only 306 doc­u­ment­ed cas­es in the U.S. (as of 6/28/2022), hun­dreds of thou­sands of vac­cine dos­es are being read­ied for human use.

The dis­ease bears an epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ty to AIDS: an African mon­key virus infect­ing gay males with mul­ti­ple sex part­ners.

“How AI is bat­tling the coro­n­avirus out­break” by Rebec­ca Heil­weil; Vox; 01/28/2020.

. . . . Sim­i­lar­ly, the epi­dem­ic-mon­i­tor­ing com­pa­ny Metabio­ta deter­mined that Thai­land, South Korea, Japan, and Tai­wan had the high­est risk of see­ing the virus show up more than a week before cas­es in those coun­tries were actu­al­ly report­ed, par­tial­ly by look­ing to flight data. Metabio­ta, like Blue­Dot, uses nat­ur­al-lan­guage pro­cess­ing to eval­u­ate online reports about a poten­tial dis­ease, and it’s also work­ing on devel­op­ing the same tech­nol­o­gy for social media data.

Mark Gal­li­van, Metabiota’s data sci­ence direc­tor, explains that online plat­forms and forums can also give an indi­ca­tion that there’s a risk of an epi­dem­ic. Metabio­ta also claims it can esti­mate the risk of a disease’s spread caus­ing social and polit­i­cal dis­rup­tion, based on infor­ma­tion like an illness’s symp­toms, mor­tal­i­ty rate, and the avail­abil­i­ty of treat­ment. For instance, at the time of this article’s pub­li­ca­tion, Metabio­ta rat­ed the risk of the nov­el coro­n­avirus caus­ing pub­lic anx­i­ety as “high” in the US and Chi­na, but it rat­ed this risk for the mon­key­pox virus in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go (where there have been report­ed cas­es of that virus) as “medi­um.”

It’s hard to know just how accu­rate this rat­ing sys­tem or the plat­form itself can be, but Gal­li­van says the com­pa­ny is work­ing with the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and the Defense Depart­ment on issues relat­ed to the coro­n­avirus. This is part of Metabiota’s work with In-Q-Tel, the non­prof­it ven­ture firm asso­ci­at­ed with the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. But gov­ern­ment agen­cies aren’t the only poten­tial clients of these sys­tems. Metabio­ta also adver­tis­es its plat­form to rein­sur­ance com­pa­nies — rein­sur­ance is essen­tial­ly insur­ance for insur­ance com­pa­nies — that might want to man­age the finan­cial risks asso­ci­at­ed with a disease’s poten­tial spread. . . .

2. We review an excerpt­ing of an op-ed col­umn by Scott Got­tlieb, the head of the FDA under Trump, a mem­ber of the con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute and a mem­ber of the board of direc­tors of Pfiz­er.

He notes that the new agency cre­at­ed by Biden to deal with mon­key­pox and oth­er emerg­ing infec­tions was for­mer­ly: ” . . . . an office inside ‌the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices that is charged with coor­di­nat­ing the fed­er­al response to bioter­ror­ism . . . .”

“Mon­key­pox Is About to Become the Next Pub­lic Health Fail­ure” by Scott Got­tlieb; The New York Times; 7/30/2002.

. . . . It has effec­tive­ly cre­at­ed an agency out of an office inside ‌the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices that is charged with coor­di­nat­ing the fed­er­al response to bioter­ror­ism, among oth­er things. The reorder­ing puts the new Admin­is­tra­tion for Strate­gic Pre­pared­ness and Response on equal foot­ing with the C.D.C. . . .

3a. Sam­pling some of the media cov­er­age of the mon­key­pox out­break, Mr. Emory reads from Amer­i­ca’s “News­pa­per of Record,” The New York Times:

“Anoth­er Virus Is Catch­ing Amer­i­ca Off Guard” by Jay K. Var­ma; The New York Times; 6/28/2022; p. A23 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

“Health Offi­cials Call Emer­gency for Mon­key­pox” by Apoor­va Man­davil­li; The New York Times; 7/24/2022; pp. A1-A23 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

“Health Sec­re­tary Says States ‘Need to Work with Us’ on Fight­ing Mon­key­pox” by Sheryl Gay Stol­berg and Noah Wei­land; The New York Times; 7/29/2022; p. A‑20 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

“U.S. Calls Rise of Mon­ey­pox an Emer­gency” by Sheryl Gay Stol­berg and Apoor­va Man­davil­li; The New York Times; 8/5/2022; pp. A1-A15 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

“In Mon­key­pox, Gay Men Con­front a Health Cri­sis With Echoes of the Past” by Liam Stack; The New York Times; 7/29/2022; p. A‑20 [West­ern Print Edi­tion].

3b. Media cov­er­age of the out­break char­ac­ter­izes mon­key­pox as a dis­ease afflict­ing pri­mar­i­ly gay males with mul­ti­ple sex partners–similar to the epi­demi­ol­o­gy of the ear­ly AIDS out­break.

“Show­ing Old Prej­u­dices, U.S. Gov­ern­ment False­ly Asso­ciates Mon­key­pox Out­break with Gays, Bisex­u­als and Africans” by  Mor­gan Artyukhi­na; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 8/14/2022.

 Mis­in­for­ma­tion Breeds More Fear of Minor­i­ty Groups Along With Mis­un­der­stand­ing About Dis­ease Itself

Care­less mes­sag­ing by glob­al health agen­cies about the out­break of mon­key­pox virus has cre­at­ed wide­spread pub­lic con­fu­sion, includ­ing asso­ci­at­ing the infec­tious dis­ease with gay and bisex­u­al men and with Africans.

The unwar­rant­ed and need­less sit­u­a­tion is a pub­lic health fail­ure and has cam­ou­flaged the true nature of the out­break, which does not dis­crim­i­nate between races, gen­ders, or sex­u­al­i­ties, pos­ing a greater risk to the U.S. pub­lic at large.

Accord­ing to the U.S. Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC), more than 11,177 cas­es of mon­key­pox virus (MPXV) have been detect­ed in the Unit­ed States since May, with near­ly all of them being gay and bisex­u­al men, some­times word­ed as “men who have sex with men (MSM).” Glob­al­ly, more than 31,799 cas­es have been detect­ed across 87 coun­tries, with most of them in the U.S., Spain, the Unit­ed King­dom, and Ger­many.

The dis­ease is close­ly relat­ed to the extinct virus var­i­o­la, which caused small­pox. It was first detect­ed in humans in West Africa in 1970, but has nev­er reached such a wide-scale out­break as present­ly exists. This out­break is dri­ven by the West African clade, which has a mor­tal­i­ty rate of less than 1%. A two-shot vac­cine, Jyn­neos, is pro­duced by Dan­ish com­pa­ny Bavar­i­an Nordic and licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) to inoc­u­late against mon­key­pox, and small­pox vac­cines are pre­dict­ed to pro­vide pro­tec­tion as well, due to their sim­i­lar­i­ty.

Health offi­cials have clear­ly and repeat­ed­ly stat­ed that every­one can catch mon­key­pox and that it is not sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted, mean­ing there is noth­ing unique about gay and bisex­u­al men with respect to the virus. What is unique about queer men is that they are the only ones being test­ed, result­ing in a false pic­ture of the out­break as being either only pos­si­ble among them or that it is being spread by them. . . .

. . . . How­ev­er, some, such as health-ori­ent­ed Boston Globe spin­off Stat News, plain­ly stat­ed that “It is not known how any of these peo­ple con­tract­ed the virus,” not­ing that “trans­mis­sion is thought to occur main­ly through virus-laced droplets, but direct con­tact with lesions or bod­i­ly flu­ids from an infect­ed per­son, or indi­rect con­tact via con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed cloth­ing or linens, can also result in trans­mis­sion.” . . . .

3c. Much of the broad­cast con­sists of infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of air­borne trans­mis­sion of mon­key­pox. NB: Mr. Emory can­not com­ment def­i­nite­ly on this possibility–he presents this analy­sis to note the pos­si­bil­i­ty.

“CDC Rigs Its Own Mon­key­pox Case Reports by Not Includ­ing Ques­tions on Air­borne Trans­mis­sion” by Lam­bert Strether; Naked Cap­i­tal­ism; 8/15/2022.

This short and sweet post will have two parts. First, I will show that the CDC Mon­key­pox case report form omits any ques­tions about air­borne trans­mis­sion. Then I will show why that’s a bad idea, inex­plic­a­ble giv­en CDC’s pre­vi­ous doc­u­men­ta­tion on this point.

Caveat: I am not say­ing that “Mon­key­pox is air­borne.” To my knowl­edge, we don’t have epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies of the same qual­i­ty we have with Covid; the kind with seat charts and dia­grams of air­flow (as in the famous Skag­it Val­ley cho­rus study, but with many oth­ers); that is the kind of evi­dence I rate high­est, most of all because such stud­ies show me how to imag­ine the ground and what to do. How­ev­er, we do have suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion not to rule out air­borne trans­mis­sion alto­geth­er, as I will show. That CDC does this a pri­ori — and at the start of what we all hope is not the start of anoth­er glob­al pan­dem­ic on the order of Covid — is mind-bog­gling, or would be mind-bog­gling if we had not, by this time, had plen­ty of expe­ri­ence with how “The Cen­ters for Dis­ease” oper­ates. They have form.

First, let’s look at the CDC case report, “OMB No. 0920–1011.” We have the “Short Form,” designed to be filled out by state or local health offi­cials. We also have the “Data Dic­tio­nary Code­book” (same OMB num­ber), which doc­u­ments the data­base fields that will be pop­u­lat­ed by Short Form data entry. Both are embed­ded in the Appen­dix to this post. (The name “Short Form” sug­gests the exis­tence of a “Long Form,” prob­a­bly pop­u­lat­ing data­base fields unused by the Short Form, but if such a form exists, I haven’t seen it.

From trans­mis­sion, the key sec­tion in the Short From is “His­to­ry of Pos­si­ble Expo­sures.” Here it is:

As you can see, the struc­tured por­tion of the form (i.e. check­box­es and radio but­tons) does not per­mit any rep­re­sen­ta­tion of air­borne trans­mis­sion (cer­tain­ly not a “fleet­ing con­tact” such as has occurred with Covid); air­borne tran­mis­sion is ruled out a pri­ori[1].

An inter­view­er des­per­ate to some­how cram infor­ma­tion about air­borne trans­mis­sion into the form could use the fol­low­ing text fields (“loca­tion of expo­sure,” “addi­tion­al details”):

How­ev­er, exact­ly because such data would be unstruc­tured and unstan­dard­ized, it’s not like­ly to make it into any reports gen­er­at­ed from the data­base.

We now turn to the Data Dic­tio­nary Code­book. As you can see, fields on the Short Form are mapped to fields in a data­base. Here is an exam­ple of how the doc­u­men­ta­tion is struc­tured:

As you can see, the basic struc­ture is a series of field/value pairs, mutu­al­ly exclu­sive (ORed radio but­tons) or not (AND­ed check­box­es). Hilar­i­ous­ly, I found this field while search­ing for “air” (“prairie”); no such luck. “Prairie Dog” strong­ly sug­gests that the Data Dic­tio­nary dates from no lat­er than 2003, when “All peo­ple infect­ed with mon­key­pox in this out­break became ill after hav­ing con­tact with pet prairie dogs. The pets were infect­ed after being housed near import­ed small mam­mals from Ghana. This was the first time that human mon­key­pox was report­ed out­side of Africa.” But no doubt our think­ing, and our fields, have been updat­ed since that time.

We can also see from this exam­ple that the Code­Book con­tains many fields that are not used in the Short Form. Here is anoth­er exam­ple:

The word “mask” does not appear in the Short Form.

I scanned the entire code­book, and I can’t find any fields that would store data rel­e­vant to air­borne trans­mis­sion in the gen­er­al case. (You can check my work in the Appen­dix.) For exam­ple, the famous Japan­ese 3Cs — closed spaces (with poor ven­ti­la­tion), crowd­ed places (with many peo­ple near­by), and close-con­tact set­tings (such as close-range con­ver­sa­tions), are high­ly struc­tured and would lend them­selves well to rep­re­sen­ta­tion in a data­base. Here are more sug­ges­tions:

We can con­clude, then, that CDC sim­ply is not enquir­ing into air­borne trans­mis­sion of Mon­key­pox. They have ruled it out, a pri­ori. How­ev­er, if you go by exist­ing lit­er­a­ture — includ­ing from the CDC itself — there’s plen­ty of rea­son con­sid­er it a real pos­si­blli­ty. To that lit­er­a­ture we now turn.

* * *

First, from KHN, “CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Guid­ance On Air­borne Risks Of Mon­key­pox“:

The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion says it removed the rec­om­men­da­tion that trav­el­ers wor­ried about mon­key­pox should wear a mask because it was caus­ing con­fu­sion. Although pub­lic health offi­cials have been link­ing many of the cas­es in this out­break to close sex­u­al con­tacts, mon­key­pox can also be spread through the air for short dis­tances.

This is one of KHN’s handy wrap-ups. From the New York Times, “Mon­key­pox Can Be Air­borne, Too.” So why not col­lect data on air­borne trans­mi­sion of mon­key­pox, if only to rule it out?

Then there’s Nature, “How does mon­key­pox spread? What sci­en­tists know.” What we “know” seems sol­id:

Sev­er­al stud­ies… show that few peo­ple con­tract the dis­ease from an infect­ed house­hold mem­ber with whom they didn’t have sex­u­al con­tact. This find­ing, paired with the data about viral load, sug­gests that res­pi­ra­to­ry droplets and air­borne par­ti­cles prob­a­bly aren’t the pri­ma­ry trans­mis­sion route… If cor­rob­o­rat­ed by fur­ther research [which CDC has decid­ed not to do, because rea­sons], it could call into ques­tion whether peo­ple should iso­late for the entire dura­tion of infec­tion, which might be dif­fi­cult because the ill­ness seems to take up to a month to resolve, she adds.

But what we “know” melts into air:

Even if the virus can be sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted, it’s unclear how large of a role this mode of trans­mis­sion has, com­pared with sim­ply being in close, skin-to-skin con­tact with a per­son or inhal­ing their res­pi­ra­to­ry par­ti­cles [gawd, they can nev­er say “aerosols”] — which also occur dur­ing sex.

Put more point­ed­ly, dur­ing sex — hear me out — peo­ple share air, so any the­o­ry of skin-to-skin con­tact has an enor­mous con­found­ing fac­tor. So why not col­lect data on air­borne trans­mi­sion of mon­key­pox, if only to rule it out?

Now let’s do a (frankly cur­so­ry) review of the lit­er­a­ture on air­borne trans­mis­sion of mon­key­pox.

CDC, “Small­pox & Oth­er Orthopoxvirus-Asso­ci­at­ed Infec­tions.” Here is CDC scrub­bing it:

CDC, “Hos­pi­tal Res­pi­ra­to­ry Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram Toolk­it“:

CDC, “Poten­tial Expo­sure to Per­son with Con­firmed Human Mon­key­pox Infec­tion” (via):

CDC, “Mon­key­pox in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go“:

Cough­ing and sneez­ing is pos­si­bly droplets (loo­gies, bal­lis­tic). Talk­ing (like singing) cer­tain­ly includes aerosols, i.e. trans­mis­sion is air­borne.

But wait, there’s more from the CDC:

GOV.UK, “High con­se­quence infec­tious dis­eases (HCID)“:

And final­ly, Clin­i­cal Infec­tious Dis­eases, “The Clin­i­cal Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Human Mon­key­pox, and Risk Fac­tors for Severe Dis­ease.” Fig­ure 1 lists the upper and low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tract symp­toms — arguably relat­ed to breath­ing, not touch — the researchers stud­ied.:

Odd­ly, the CDC’s “Short Form” has elim­i­nat­ed all these symp­toms, even cough­ing:

Again, why not col­lect data on air­borne trans­mi­sion of mon­key­pox, if only to rule it out?

 

NOTES

[1] CDC might not be so strong on trans­mis­sion, but hoo boy! Did they lav­ish atten­tion on data struc­tures for gen­der and race (although not, nat­u­ral­ly, prox­ies for class like income or edu­ca­tion lev­el).

3d. Although appar­ent­ly quite rare, chil­dren have con­tract­ed the dis­ease, with­out engag­ing in the behav­ior asso­ci­at­ed with the spread of mon­key­pox.